Michael White reports from the first day of the 2007 Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton, where ominous clouds have been casting shadows on Sir Ming Campbell's parade

9am, London: En route to Brighton in the sunshine, I wade through most of the papers, which remain Northern Rock and McCann-orientated. Is it better to see your annual party conference ignored by the media's feral beasts or to see it trashed?

Always a hard one for the Liberal Democrats, who routinely see their better ideas stolen by the big boys and their dafter ones held up to ridicule.

The TV networks and the broadsheets find some room to discuss the leadership issue - the media-designated agenda which the party is determined to shake off - though the tabloids barely bother either way. They are not a tabloid party, are they?

Under a headline ''Second Lib Dem Link'' the very feral Mail on Sunday reports that Hanover Communications, the PR firm of which Charles Kennedy's brother-in-law, James Gurling, is a director, has been retained by Kate and Gerry McCann. And er... for Lib Dem coverage, that's about it.

Midday: Brighton where the sun is battling it out with clouds from the west, possibly symbolic of ominous Lib Dem polling data for all their southern MPs east of St Ives, Ming Campbell and his lieutenants have been busy ahead of their activists' arrival today.

They are talking up their prospects and 66-year-old Ming's political longevity. Even those like Chris Huhne and Nick Clegg, leadership contenders next time, join loyally in. If Ming's wheelchair fell into the sea, would they rescue him ? Hmmm.

Loyalty matters. When I appeared on Sky TV at the weekend with Mr Huhne he forcefully defended the leader, contrasting his experience with David Cameron's lack of it. Sir Ming has a great career behind him, Mr Huhne said. What he meant was a great CV.

But a leaked memo in the Sunday papers finds Sir Ming's chief of staff, beefy Ed Davey MP, urging him to be ''hyper-active'' this week.

So Sir Ming popped up in the Observer to tell readers he will lead his party ''through the general election and into the next parliament'' when he could be 69 - too old, many voters told the Sunday Times/YouGov pollsters. Even Lib Dems think they would do better with a younger man in charge.

As Ipsos Mori reports, the ex-Olympic sprinter comes ''a distant third'' on key leadership issues. Today he did the obligatory walk on the sea front with his wife, Elspeth. Lady Campbell's father, Major General Sir Brian Urquhart, led the ill-fated parachute landings which failed to capture the ''bridge too far'' at Arnheim in 1944. She has inherited Daddy's combative, martial style, but not communicated it to Ming.

2.30 pm: In travelling this morning I seem to have missed Andy Marr ''doing a Frost'' on Sir Ming. Do Lib Dems want to ''hammer the rich'' he gently asked.

''Yes,'' came the reply which will almost certainly feature in headlines today, designed to scare the middle class. David Frost used to do that, an old reporter's dodge - ''would you call this the most dastardly murder of your career, chief inspector?''. Good to see it still works occasionally.

There is no such excuse for Ming's chief of staff, Mr Davey, who has just briefed the media on the coming day.

Unaware that the crisis at Northern Rock will almost certainly have clobbered October general election speculation Mr Davey boasts how ready they are for October 18 or 25 - just in case. There won't just be press conferences in London, they will also be ''in the sticks,'' he tells us.

A low rumble tells Mr Davey regional reporters have just stumbled on a story. ''Lib Dems call us ''Sticks".' The Scots are, naturally, especially pleased to take offence on behalf of Edinburgh, where a presser has been planned.

Mr Davey also reveals that lots of bacon has been ordered to make sarnies that tempt reporters to those 7.30am Lib Dem election press conferences, wherever they may be.

What if the election is delayed - to next year or 2009 - we ask, ''will those pigs stay on death row?''

5.30 pm: the conference has voted not to back an academic boycott of Israel, so the party managers have won round one. But the conference hall is thinly attended. ''They'll all be gone by six,'' predicts one unkind reporter. ''The Last of the Summer Wine is on TV followed by Songs of Praise.''